Meandering Through a Literary Life
In the past, I’ve written about video games as an important experience for people who value art. Roguelike games are particularly great examples of this. In honor of junethack, a month-long NetHack tournament, I want to defend roguelike games in general, and NetHack in particular, as a means of providing an experience that is difficult … Read more
In this essay, I provide an analysis of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. I show it parodies the history of Critical Theory.
Today I’d like to talk about Richard Rorty. He was an American philosopher that became famous in the late 70’s and 80’s for advocating a new form of pragmatism. I thought this might be a good topic because, as writers, we tend to ignore important philosophical ideas we can incorporate into our stories. I tend … Read more
In October, I wrote a post in defense of gaming in which the central argument is a claim that any person who takes experiencing art as an important human experience should consider certain types of games as a worthwhile use of time as well. Some games are basically interactive films, but some are much more … Read more
“Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way” is a short story that acts as a Rosetta stone for interpreting David Foster Wallace. It encapsulates much of what he tried to do in his writing. This is mostly meant to be a direct continuation of the last post on preparing to read Infinite Jest. But … Read more
I’ve been reading the biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by D.T. Max, and it reminded me that for years I’ve been meaning to do a blog post on some of the preparation you can do to have a much better experience reading Infinite Jest. First, I’m not doing … Read more
Since one of my most-read articles this year was my analysis of the passion narrative around Easter time, I thought I’d do another one on the Nativity Story for Christmas. I’m not going to present much historical analysis that the events depicted are fiction (it is well-known that there was no census, no slaughter of … Read more
Are video games art? What a bizarre question. It has been debated through the years, but I’m not sure there is anyone out there that has seriously thought about the question and is willing to defend that they are not. The debate seems over and the conclusion is that video games are art. Ebert’s Objection … Read more
Egon Wellesz is one of those composers you should know if you’re into music. There is a serious lack of knowledge about great modern composers, even among regular symphony-goers. Egon Wellesz Bio Recap Egon Wellesz was an early twentieth-century composer whose music seems to have been totally forgotten. He was also a musicologist, and I … Read more
I recently learned that some Barnes and Noble has an “essay” section. This will be my downfall. I was glancing through it and stumbled upon something that sounded fascinating. If you’ve been reading these articles for any significant amount of time, then you’ll know that influence is a topic that is endlessly fascinating to me. … Read more
